


As Sharks in Sheep's Clothing

by Giddygeek



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Episode: s03e13 Will You Play With Me?, Episode: s04e05 Escape From the Happy Place, M/M, which is to say that someone bleeds and someone else loves them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 12:30:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17939744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giddygeek/pseuds/Giddygeek
Summary: Eliot goes out on a limb, and drags everyone he loves with him.Or: somehow, kidfic.





	As Sharks in Sheep's Clothing

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-typical gore! Canon-typical absurdity! Kidfic, which seems to me like the only logical conclusion to this arc, which is sure to be jossed by episode 04.06! Something for everyone, really.
> 
> Thanks to longnationalnightmare and JanetCarter for beta.
> 
> Title is from Be Brave, by Modest Mouse.

The wellspring in Blackspire spilled red and wild. The fountain it used to flow from had exploded at some point; Eliot hadn’t had a lot of time to catch up, but he thought that the monster had used him to do it. He’d come back to himself beside the pit where it had been, at least, liquid pattering down on his face, Julia unconscious across his chest and Quentin screaming.

Things had gone downhill from there.

The liquid that came out of the pit smelled old, foul, long dead. Eliot was soaked in it up to the knee, to the elbow, as he knelt on the floor, holding Julia’s head up out of the mess. She hadn’t opened her eyes in a long time, but she wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway, not like all the corpses piled around the shattered remnants of the fountain—

_Eliot back in control of his own body. Julia in his arms, his hand wet to the wrist with her blood. Alice, Quentin, Margo, and Penny screaming in some language he didn’t recognize, their hands flying. Alice’s hands and eyes blue. A kid lying at their feet, haphazardly pulled out of what had been the wellspring; the monster reborn, movements jerky and wrong. Blackspire moaning, or maybe it was Eliot._

A body bumped against his side and he smelled it, he could smell it despite the general scent of death and viscera; ozone and blood and shit and something grassy, like hay fresh-mown in a field, like lying on the lawn at Brakebills in the warm summertime, idle magic in his hands. 

He didn’t look to see whose body it was. A dead god, probably. The smell of hay wasn’t human. And if any of his friends had gone down in the last few minutes, he’d been too busy to see it happen.

_The kid screaming at a corpse, “I only wanted you to play with me! To be with me! To love me--” kicking at the head, sending the limp body sliding across the dark, wet floor. Despite its nakedness, Eliot couldn’t determine the kid’s sex, it was so covered in gore and dirt. It went to its knees and pushed the corpse with its hands, almost sobbing. “Why create me just to trap me here, like this, forever?”_

Beside Eliot, Quentin knelt, helping Alice stay upright despite the flood threatening to sweep them all apart. Alice’s glasses had cracked, one lens covered in blood. Eliot couldn’t tell if the words she said were whispered or screamed. It was too loud: Blackspire was shrieking around them. The castle was tearing itself apart.

The monster was tearing it apart.

_The kid sniffled, wiping its bloody nose with a bloody wrist. Its chest was cut open, organs haphazardly crammed inside it, but it didn’t seem to notice. It turned its head and looked at Quentin. “You know why they did it.”_

_Quentin stopped casting. He stood, looking back at the kid. His eyes were wide, glazed with exhaustion. He had blood in his hair. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “And so do you.”_

_“To create the wellspring.”_

_Quentin nodded. “To create the wellspring.”_

“I want what they took from me!” the monster howled, loud enough to be heard despite the cacophony of Blackspire. Sparks rained down on its head. It was so small, so fragile in its real body. It must not have stood a chance against the gods, once they’d decided to destroy their creation.

_“Please let us help our friends,” Quentin said. “They never did anything to hurt you. They helped save you.”_

_The monster shoved the god’s body again, sending it tumbling down a stair and into the water still pulsing out of the wellspring. “No one can save me,” it said. “Do whatever you want. What should I care. You only love them anyway. Not me. Not me.”_

“What’s _left_?” Quentin shouted back at it. Alice ignored the yelling, bending over Julia in Eliot’s arms, her hands shaping forms lightning fast. “You have the organs! You dragged the body out of the grave! What else do you want?”

“What they _took_!” The monster stomped through the bodies and rising floodwaters, splashing the foul stuff on itself. Eliot could see it healing as the waters touched it. Its skinny small chest closed transparent over organs it had dug out of the other gods—that it had used Eliot to dig out of the other gods. The long wounds on its arms knit shut.

Eliot looked down as the monster cupped its hands and took frantic gulps of the, the _water_ Eliot told himself, even though it wasn’t water. It wasn’t. What looked like water in the wellspring had never been anything but the blood of a sacrificed child of the gods, left in agonizing stasis for millenia. Drained by the wellsprings in Fillory and Blackspire, never free, never allowed to die.

It could drink as much of its own blood as it wanted. It would never find any love in it. It would never be satisfied.

Never heal.

Not alone, anyway.

#

Alice shoved her fingers into the hole in Julia’s chest. Iris hadn’t succeeded in tricking Julia into carrying one of the monster’s organs before she died, but the monster had checked anyway. Some of the blood on Eliot’s hands belonged to her. Some of the blood on Alice’s hands belonged to Julia too, but at least she was trying to help Julia, not dig around in her ribs for something that could never be found.

Eliot bore Alice and Julia’s weight in his arms, nodding when Quentin looked at him and caught his eye with an urgent question: yes, he could hold them.

Quentin rose and splashed toward the monster. He hesitated, looking down at it still drinking from the foul floodwaters. His mouth tightened, and he put his own bloody hand down on a thin, bare shoulder. He said a few short words to it. Eliot couldn’t hear him, but he could tell just from Quentin’s face that he’d said something unbearably kind.

In his arms, Julia gasped and arched. One of her hands twitched, and Eliot gathered her closer, holding on tight to keep her still, to avoid attracting the monster’s attention. 

Alice looked up when Julia’s other hand clutched weakly at her, triumph gleaming in the eye Eliot could see through her broken, bloody glasses.

The eye glowing niffin-blue.

Fuck, what else had _happened_ while he was trapped in his happy place?

In the center of the room, Quentin and the monster stood framed by a shower of golden sparks. The monster looked up at Quentin. The noise level around them dropped, Blackspire settling more calmly on its foundations as some of the chaos eased. 

Quentin smiled down at it, tremulous, warm. He pushed his hair back behind his ears and ducked his head, then knelt, getting lower, nearer to the monster’s level.

“Thank you,” he said to it, audible without the castle screaming around them. “I feel a little better now.”

#

Alice’s hair brushed Eliot’s chin as she bent to drop a kiss on Julia’s forehead. The kiss left a blue mark that glowed hot as Alice leaned back, pressing her thumb to it until it faded. 

Alice’s shade.

Julia gasped again, then started breathing easier, her eyes opening woozily. 

Eliot could tell the second she recognized him but he put his finger on her lips, warning her not to react. His hand left a smear of blood behind. He shook his head and cast a sidelong glance at Quentin and the monster, and Julia settled back in his arms, eyes wide on his.

“Hold her,” Alice said to Eliot. Her voice had a faintly wild, sharp edge, but she’d brought Julia back to life. Not the work of a niffin. She had some plan of her own and just enough control to hopefully make it work.

Eliot nodded at her, bracing himself. The floodwaters still poured from the broken wellspring, but at least the castle itself had stopped shaking and roaring. Alice stood, and Eliot stood with her, propping Julia on her feet and clutching her to his chest, as unsteady as a pair of foals in a muddy field.

“I want to be _whole_ ,” the monster told Quentin. “I want everything they’ve taken out of me back inside of me. Every spell, every wish, every drop of magic, every breath of creation they took. I want myself _back_.”

Quentin slid a little closer, hand braced on the monster’s shoulder. They looked steadily at each other. Eliot wanted nothing more than to drop Julia and separate them.

You don’t know, he thought, you don’t know what it’s like inside it, get away from it, please, please; but in some ways, didn’t Quentin know the monster better than he did? Quentin had spent more time than Eliot with it. All those long months when Eliot had been hiding in his happy place, Quentin had been the monster’s prisoner. Its plaything. Its confidant.

“Do you remember after my dad died?” Quentin asked the monster. He swallowed hard and looked away from them all for a second, his fingers flexing. “Do you remember how sad and angry I was?”

“We threw planes at the wall. You didn’t want to murder anything, so we broke something instead. You felt better.” The monster cocked its head, its mouth drawn down in a sullen pout. The waters pouring from the broken wellspring slowed, rising halfway up the monster’s short, kid torso. Its skin was shockingly white under the gore.

Quentin reached up and plucked a bit of something pink and wet out of the monster’s hair, wincing as he flicked it away. He nodded. “I did. I did feel better, I was glad we did that. But we only broke the planes, right? We didn’t tear down the whole city even though I was _really_ upset.”

“Do you want to go tear the city down _now_?” the monster asked. It looked around, hands outstretched, as if to say: I could be done here in an instant, if you’re finally ready for _more_.

Quentin laughed softly. “No, no. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes we get really upset about things that we’ve lost, that we can’t ever, ever get back. And sometimes when we’re that upset, we might throw something, or break something, or cry for a long time, but we have to stop eventually.”

His hand slid down to rest over the monster’s heart would be, if they’d managed to put that back where it belonged instead of cramming it any old place inside the skinny body. It had taken too long to drag the body out of the hole where the fountain had been. They’d run out of time for carefully placing the organs. Quentin patted the monster’s chest and said, “We have to look inside ourselves and say, that was enough. I feel better. I have to move on.”

“I don’t have to move on,” the monster said. “I’m a child of the gods. Except for _her_ ,” with a dismissive glance at Julia, still leaning weakly against Eliot’s chest, “I’m the only young god _left_.”

Quentin cast them all a quick glance. Despite the kindness in his voice, the gentleness in his hand on the monster’s delicate skin, his eyes were wild. Eliot caught his gaze and tried to hold it, but Quentin shook his head; Alice looked down into the waters, biting her lip.

“I guess even gods have to grieve for what they can’t get back, kiddo,” Quentin said, looking back down at the monster. “Even gods have to take some time to heal.”

“How much time,” the monster asked, sullen. The water was down around its waist. It flexed its hands, nails digging into its palms.

Quentin flinched. “A while, I bet. You lost a lot.”

The monster’s chest heaved as it breathed in. “They _took_ a lot.”

“Not everything, though,” Quentin said. He looked into the monster’s eyes and quirked a smile at it, the corners of his mouth trembling. He knew what it was like to lose almost everything. They all did. Eliot looked down at Julia, who stepped away from him, still holding onto his arm for support.

The floor was so slick and red.

Quentin tapped his thumb against the monster’s chest. “You’ve got most of yourself back. The rest, I don’t know. You might feel better about it sooner than you think, or maybe you’ll never feel all the way better. But you can’t tear everything apart just because you don’t know which it’ll be.”

The waters were still receding, down around Eliot’s knee. Another body bumped against his leg. Blackspire was dark and quiet around them, and it smelled terrible, and Eliot thought maybe that last body had been Josh, but he didn’t look. Penny had gotten Margo out when Eliot made him, Margo spitting and shrieking but alive, and Kady and Marina had set the trap the monster fell into on Earth; if they’d lost someone, he didn’t want to know yet, or maybe at all.

“I won’t go back between the wellsprings,” the monster said, warning. “It wasn’t fair of them to use me like that, no, not fair. No more magic in Fillory. No more magic anywhere, not from me. All my blood is mine. They use their own.”

The end of magic, again. Eliot let his breath out with a soft sigh. He maybe didn’t have the high morals that Quentin had, but it was hard to argue the case for trapping a god and keeping it on the edge of death and madness for eternity, just so you could warm a bath with the snap of a finger.

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Quentin told the monster. No one had given him the power to make that decision, to decide for all the world that magic was gone, but no one left alive in Blackspire disputed his right to make it.

Quentin was perhaps the most regal he’d ever been, kneeling before a monster and looking at it with all the kindness he could muster. He was a sad and generous king, more brave than any knight with a bloodied sword and a dragon’s head held aloft. Eliot wanted to go to him, but Julia held him back with a warning glance at Alice. The niffin was studying the monster from beneath her lashes, eyes sharp blue and interested.

The last of the floodwaters drained away. Eliot cast a glance at the hole where the wellspring had been; a body cavity, veins and arteries growing through the dirt and flooring. The surgery hadn’t been clean, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

The monster scuffed its bare toes against the slick, disgusting floor, looking for all the world like Dennis the Menace after a fall into the cess pit at a slaughterhouse. “But you’ll ask me to spend all that time alone, here, with no friends; I know you will, now that you have _your_ friend back.” It cast Eliot a sneering glance and Eliot jolted, unsettled by the violent jealousy it radiated. No one had told him that the monster had _bonded_ with Quentin, not like _this_.

Quentin caught the jealousy too. He put his fingers under its chin and turned the monster’s eyes back to his. “I’ll visit,” he promised. “I’ll check in on you, see how you’re doing.”

“How, without magic?” it asked, and Quentin hesitated.

Eliot knew that hesitation. “No.” He took a step forward, slipping on something that squished unpleasantly underfoot. He could see it all on Quentin’s face: resignation, a soft determination. Quentin had come to Blackspire intending to sacrifice himself to the monster’s company the first time, and there was no doubt in Eliot’s mind that he still would.

He couldn’t. Eliot hadn’t faced his worst moments just to lose Quentin in the end anyway.

“I’ll stay,” Alice said. She looked up at Quentin and the monster. She pulled off her glasses. There was no question about it: both eyes were niffin-bright, and her smile had a wild edge. “I’ll be the magic. I’ll crawl in that hole. I deserve it. Right, Q?”

“No,” Quentin said, tortured. “Alice, no.”

The monster tilted its head at her and sniffed the air. “A niffin. A _powerful_ niffin.”

“Well,” Alice said. “Experienced, maybe.”

The monster narrowed its eyes at her. “Where’s the fun in you staying here?”

Alice waved her hand, taking in the stinking wreck of Blackspire. “Where _isn’t_ the fun? I can finally be a part of the magic of all creation; I can see and hear and feel all of it, everything. I can _know_ everything. By my _choice_.”

“Powerful niffin, but not a god,” the monster said. “It won’t last forever.”

Alice looked at Quentin. “No. Not forever. But it’ll give you time to think of something else.”

Quentin shook his head. “Magic isn’t that important, Alice. It isn’t worth.” He stopped, casting a guilty glance at the monster. “It isn’t worth what the wellspring will do to you.”

“You lost the right to tell me what is or isn’t worth my time,” Alice said. She tipped her chin up, her shoulders back. “I choose the wellspring. I choose Blackspire. I choose magic, and knowledge, and power, and if you try to stop me, you’ll regret it.”

“I like her,” the monster said. “Let her stay and be my friend.”

Quentin and Eliot looked at each other. The thought of the monster alone with Alice, and Alice alone with the source of the wellspring of all magic: no. Eliot had enough rivers of blood on his hands already.

_Know that when I’m brave, it’s because I learned it from you_ , he thought. Quentin didn’t know; Quentin had been a memory when Eliot said that to him. But Eliot had meant it. He could act on it. He could show Q, take the first step on the long path of making things right.

“Why don’t you come with us,” he said to the monster, trying for the light reasonableness of Quentin’s voice; the way they had talked to their son, when he was small and irrational. “Me and Q. We’ll make you a deal. We’ll take you away from here, away from the wellspring and Blackspire—”

“—and the monsters,” the monster said. It shivered, cowering against Quentin’s side. Q looked down on it and hesitated, but put his arm across its shoulders protectively. It couldn’t have picked a guise better designed to win Quentin over than a scared child, but Eliot thought its fear was real. “They were fun, they were all fun before they were dead, they were fun to _make_ dead. But now with their faces, and those claws, I don’t like them at all. They do _not_ play right.”

“—and the monsters,” Eliot agreed. “And we’ll—we had a son, before. Quentin and I. He grew up to be a lovely man. A loved man.”

He looked into Quentin’s eyes. _I’m not afraid_ , he thought. _I won’t run. Not from you. Not from this._ He said softly, “We could try again.”

Quentin’s eyes narrowed.

“Son.” The monster hummed under its breath, considering. “Like Quentin was his father’s son?”

“Yeah, kinda like that,” Quentin said, his gaze still locked to Eliot’s.

The monster looked up at him. “Will I have to be sad and throw things when you die?” it asked, suspicious.

“Oh, probably,” Quentin said. His hand tightened on the monster’s shoulder. “I would be honored if you did, actually. As long as you just threw toy planes or something and not like, people, or civilizations.”

“No throwing people or civilizations,” Eliot agreed. “In fact, no harming people or civilizations or planets or gods or people’s pets or anything else that’s sentient. That’s what we get out of the deal. You come with us, you don’t harm anyone else—not for as long as there’s anyone else to hurt.”

“Boring,” the monster said, with all the disdain of a teenager forced to talk to their mother at the mall.

“Oh, yeah? As boring as sitting in an empty castle by yourself?” Quentin asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Wouldn’t be by myself,” the monster said. It bared its sharp little white teeth at Alice. “Got a niffin. That could be fun.”

Julia stirred. She kept her hand on her chest, over the place where Alice had healed her; the place where the monster had dug around, looking for a piece of itself that she didn’t have. “The niffin is my worshiper,” she said, her voice low and wobbly. “A part of me, as I’m a part of her now. And I’m the one god who’s done you no harm. In return, you’ll do no harm to me or mine.”

The monster scowled at her. “You’re all so boring,” it complained. “This is going to _suck_.”

But it turned to Quentin again and, looking him in the eye like a dare, took his hand in its own small, bloody one. Quentin closed his fingers around the monster’s. A hurt look crossing his face like he’d been punched. He’d loved to hold their son’s hand, Eliot remembered. He’d always been so gentle, the affectionate father that Eliot had wanted when he was a child, that he had strived so hard to become.

The monster turned to Eliot.

“He is my favorite,” it said bluntly. “Always. You, I will tolerate.”

“Acceptable,” Eliot said. He stepped forward and, greatly daring, reached out for the monster’s other hand. “And I’ll tolerate you.”

The monster’s eyes were ringed by dark lashes, with wide gray irises and huge pupils, like the eyes of a doll or anime character. Its face was long and pointy. Its ribs protruded. It looked up at Eliot, who looked back down at it, and knew it was alien, a god, a murderer; knew that he and Quentin would come to love it.

He rubbed his thumb over its dirty knuckles. “I’ll tolerate you, _after_ I give you a bath.”

The monster drew back, offended, its skinny shoulders drawn up to its ears. “No _baths_ ,” it said, scandalized, and Eliot smiled at Quentin, who was watching him with solemn, soft eyes.

“Baths,” he said firmly. “Now, come on. It’s almost time for dinner, and you’ll be going to bed on time tonight. Your new dad and I have a lot to talk about.”

“Dinner,” the monster said, disgusted. “Dinner! Who permits you to order a god to eat dinner!”

Eliot raised an eyebrow.

It rubbed its nose and leaned against Quentin. “…I want pizza. And a bedtime story.”

“Done,” Eliot said. “Now, go with Auntie Julia. Quentin and I are going to say good night to Auntie Alice.”

Julia shot him a furious look but took the monster’s hand in hers without hesitation when Eliot held it out to her. The monster cast a glance at Quentin, who nodded, and it let go of Quentin’s hand, eyeing him for a moment like it might snatch his hand back up.

Julia led it, hesitant but not fighting her, toward the hall. “What’s your name?” 

“I don’t have one,” it said. “Can I have one?”

“Of course.”

“I want pineapple and sprinkles on my pizza.”

“...sure,” Julia said, and the sound of their voices discussing pizza toppings trailed off toward the Muntjac.

#

Alice had already stripped, unselfconscious, by the time Quentin and Eliot turned back to her. She stood beside the pit where the fountain had been, looking down into it with pleasure.

“I thought the Library would be perfect, but it wasn’t,” she said to Quentin as he came to stand beside her. “Too many rules. Too many, many rules. This will be _much_ better.”

Quentin put an arm over her shoulder, pressing his cheek to hers. “You don’t have to,” he murmured to her. “I can still stay.”

“We could stay,” Eliot said. “You don’t get to make that sacrifice alone, not this time. I told you, we have a lot to talk about. Breaking up again isn’t on the list.”

“When did we get back together?” Quentin asked, raising his eyebrows. “All I remember about today is a lot of blood magic and a few broken laws of physics. I don’t recall agreeing to let you, I don’t know, un-break up with me.”

Alice’s eyes flashed.

“I’ll tell you later,” Eliot said, magnanimous, backing away. “After you’re done saying goodbye to Alice.”

Alice bared her teeth at him and he was glad, so glad, they wouldn’t be leaving her alone with the monster; not like this. They’d be unstoppable, a force of destruction like none any world had ever seen.

But when she turned to Quentin, her face was soft, nearly normal, the sweetly infatuated scared rabbit Eliot remembered from their early days at Brakebills.

“I’ll watch over you,” Alice promised Quentin.

“Niffins don’t watch over people.” Quentin dashed away a tear, biting his lip. “Niffins disappear. Alice, you’ll disappear in there.”

“I don’t think I’m purely a niffin this time,” Alice said. She touched her forehead, and a mark appeared, shining blue and bright; a match to the mark she had given Julia. “I’m a worshiper, too. A devotee. I’ve shared my shade with a goddess, Q. I’m something new.”

Quentin ducked his head. “There have been a lot of new things created today, Alice. We don’t know how many of these changes are good.”

“Good, bad, inevitable.” Alice dismissed his worry with a wave of her hand. “We’re talking god-level issues now. All those words are just so small.” She pressed her hand to his cheek. “You’ve always been too human. You’ll just have to trust me on this. Whatever else I am, I want to be the wellspring, too.”

Quentin closed his eyes and leaned into her hand. “Then I won’t stop you.”

“You couldn’t,” Alice said. “I’d kill everyone here if you tried.” She stretched up to kiss Quentin’s bloody cheek, and stepped away from his embrace. The pit welcomed her as she stepped into it, sitting down unselfconsciously, lying back and spreading herself out with a sigh. She closed her brilliant blue eyes and smiled. 

“Brilliant,” she said dreamily. “Someday you’ll see—”

Alice gasped softly, ecstatic, as the wellspring found her, and the ground closed over her like a blanket.

#

Quentin didn’t complain when Eliot pulled him into a hug, but he didn’t hug back. His arms hung limp and exhausted. He pressed his cheek flat on Eliot’s chest, his eyes on the ground where Alice had been.

“I killed a god today, El,” he said, voice low. “You missed that part. I actually killed three. And I lost my ex-girlfriend. And I gained a really, really troubled kid. What the fuck am I going to tell my mom?”

“Blame me.” Eliot hugged him closer. “Tell her I was impatient to start a family. It’s not even a lie. We’ve already raised one son together.” He pressed a kiss to Quentin’s temple. “Why not another one?”

“Because he’s a crazy, vicious, murderous monster,” Quentin muttered. He drew back to frown up at Eliot. “And I have questions about when we went from, ‘oh no, Q, it would never work between us,’ to ‘I want to raise a feral god with you,’ Eliot.”

“I’ll answer them,” Eliot promised him. “After bedtime.” He put a finger under Quentin’s chin and tipped his head back, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth, sliding his hand to grip the nape of Quentin’s neck. 

Quentin followed the kiss. He sighed into it, relaxing, and Eliot was shattered all over again by the heart of him, the bravery, the generosity. 

Eliot broke the kiss to press their foreheads together. “You have no idea what you are,” he breathed. “What you’ve done.”

“What I’m in for now,” Quentin said, and huffed out a breath that was half a laugh, half a sigh.

Blackspire’s walls rumbled. The fountain began to reassemble itself; a new shape, spiraling and wild, with no sign of the McCallister’s siphon. Eliot would like to have seen anyone try to drain Alice-the-wellspring; he had a feeling it would end bloodily and fast. _Especially_ for the Librarians.

“We should go before this place rebuilds itself around us,” Eliot said, with a smile that felt only slightly crazed. “I don’t want to be trapped inside Alicespire forever, Q. I’d like to be able to fuck you without worrying about getting murdered by our house.”

Quentin pulled back and looked up at him. “Oh, so this won’t be platonic co-parenting?” he asked sarcastically. “Are you sure I like dick well enough for that?” but he took Eliot’s hand in his and led him carefully through the muck down the path Julia and the monster had made.

“Well, I’ve had proof of concept,” Eliot said, and he followed his family back onto their ship.


End file.
